... Once (and still) Infertile, but still Schnarky as hell. This blog is dedicated to the daily ramblings from the mind of Nancy. It isn't about anything profound in the grand scheme of things, but it ~is~ about things in my life, schnarkiness always included. I have a second blog, listed in my profile, but the blogs will continue to remain separate.

"I'm aiming for heaven, but I'll probably wind up down in hell"

Monday, February 8, 2010

Maybe I'm just inept at watching movies.

I watch movies weird. I already know I'm a tad strange in watching the ends of movies, but today, I was thinking of the other things that may be considered "weird".

~ I always try to spot mistakes. Like watching a clock in the background to see if the time remains consistent. Or the amount of liquid in a cup. Or if some one's clothes are wet, they remain the same amount of wet throughout the shots. You know the movie "journey to the center of the earth?" It's hot and they guy's shirt is wet with sweat. But the sweat stain is constantly changing. This is how I watch movies. I don't watch the actors speak - I constantly scan for errors. And I find many, many, many of them.

~ Luggage. Luggage in movies piss me off because they are ALWAYS empty. You can tell when people are carrying empty luggage. And I swear, no one ever puts anything IN them, unless of course, they are opening/closing/packing them. Other than that, they just carry them empty.

~ Women always wake up in bed with perfect make up and hair. Sometimes it a bit tousled, but it's not the way I look when I wake up!

~ Background extras. In scenes in malls, airports, the street, I watch the extras. And I can usually spot the same person walking back and forth. Or the same extra in different scenes. The movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger Total Recall. There is a guy who walks by in the background multiple times in every scene with extras. He must be doing the producer.

~ Stunt doubles. I am constantly stopping and clicking back in a movie to look to see how badly the stunt guy/girl doubles as the actor. Hint to movie producers - The same outfit and a wig does not a double make! It's always worse when it's a stunt guy/girl doubling as a kid. It's hilarious how they try to make an adult look like the kid. Hilarious.

~ This isn't a movie, but has anyone seen the kid show "Bear in the Big Blue House"? We don't watch it anymore, but when the girls were little, they sometimes watched it. And the bear drove me absolutely nutty over one teeny aspect - his right arm. Okay, this may be a bit hard to describe. The bear is like 7 feet tall, so the actor inside the bear suit must use his right arm to operate the head/face somehow. His left arm is inside Bear's left arm, so that's normal. But since the actor does not have three arms, the right arm is fixed in place. And that lack of movement drives me nuts. It's quite annoying. Take a look next time you see the show on and you'll see what I mean.

~ CSI. Can anyone turn on a freaking light? Please? You'd think as crime scene investigators they would want to be able to see and find everything possible. Yet they continue to do everything in the dark.

~ Speaking of lights, I also notice how a candle or a lamp or a flashlight can suddenly illuminate an entire room. Movie sets must use 5,000 watt light bulbs. Except CSI of course.

And here is where I start to get schnarky ...

~ My worst pet peeve in the movie theatre is people who eat candy and constantly scrunch the cellophane wrapper. Seriously, can you please pour some in your hand or take off the fucking wrapper? You don't have to eat them one by one.

~ Another pet peeve in a movie theatre is people who think texting (or just looking at their phone) during a movie is okay. That light is fucking annoying. The theatre is dark for a reason. You know how if you get up in the middle of the night to go pee or whatever and if you turn on a light, it fucking blinds you (and it's why I pee in the dark)? Yeah - same thing with your phone. It's overly bright and it's damned rude.

(Crunching on popcorn or sipping a drink or getting up to go to the bathroom or laughing overly loud - I can deal with that all. It's all normal things. But talking over a whisper, candy wrapper scrunching and cell phone usage is overly annoying. Don't these people care about anyone else but themselves?)

Anywho - that's my list. Is anyone else like me? Or do I just watch movies differently than the entire rest of the world?

I like to get list in a story, so unless it's obvious I'm usually not the one to notice discrepencies.

But I hate hate HATE when people talk at the movies. Or kick my seat, or jiggle the whole row. Especially because 99% of the time, no matter how politely I ask them to stop, they give ME attitude! What IS that?! I'm asking you very sweetly to please keep it down, and I am the bitch? Whatever. It drives me nuts.

I can't watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse because there's something very strange going on with Mickey's ears whenever he's in profile.

I hate when people say the things in movies or TV shows are not believable. "Like that would ever happen.." - It's not REAL people, it's a TV show. It's supposed to be entertaining fantasy.

The best example of this came from my mother in law. We were watching WonderPets with Allison and she made the comment about "Yeah, right, like their fly boat would really fly.."- I looked right at her and said "Oh, but it's totally believable that a guinea pig, turtle, and duck can talk and save animals?".

My husband is exactly like you with the looking for mistakes thing. He does it in TV shows too.

I am *so* with you on the CSI thing...it's ridiculously dark. I can barely watch the show because it's so dark all the time. I'm sure real forensic scientists actually use some light when they are working.

I am no longer able to suspend disbelief when watching movies. We were watching some drama/action/Vin Diesel movie the other day, and I was laughing through the whole thing because the story line and plot "twists" were just so ridiculous. I guess that means every movie's a comedy to me now! :)

I never go to the theater, so I haven't been annoyed by the texters. And usually, the movie is loud enough that I don't really notice the candy crinklers. But, you know what's really foul to me? The smell of people eating popcorn when you're not eating it yourself (not the popcorn smell, but the smell that comes out of people's mouths when they're chewing popcorn). Awful.

Oh, the cell phone thing in the theater bugs me SOOOO much!!! WHY do people feel like they have to be in constant contact with everyone else?!?! Just sit and enjoy the freakin' movie!!!!!

There is a really good blooper at the end of Anaconda (I know, I'm embarrassed to admit that I watched it...). At the end, they show the boat coming out of the mouth of the river, and it is very obviously the same scene from the beginning of the movie, run backwards, because the WATERFALL IS FLOWING BACKWARDS!!! Yep, the water is flowing UP.

my husband watches movies exactly like you & it drives me nuts, bc after 3 yrs of marriage, now I'M starting to find all the annoying mistakes & stuff, & i used to be able to just enjoy the movie... sigh! oh well! :)& dear hubby actually IS a real-life CSI, so i can't watch that show anymore either, bc the man drives me batty pointing out how awful all their police work is.

& seat kicking & giggly teenagers are my biggest movie theater pet peeves. seriously, play goo-goo eyes with your little boyfriend at some venue that the rest of us didn't just spend way too much to get into.

I know who Bear in the BIg BLue house is, but I've never seen it. It did bother me (when i was younger) that the Cookie Monster never ate the cookies, he just crunched them & they went all over the place.

And totally with you on the theater annoyances, esp cell phones. You really can't be disconnected for 2 hrs? Then stay home!

I get annoyed with people who smack their food -- my MIL does this and I secretly want to smack HER! Is that evil?

I have never seen Bear in the Big Blue House, but I'll have to keep an eye out for Mr. Stiffarm. That is annoying.

My brother is the master of looking for mistakes in movies -- you guys would get along great.

Not a movie, but a really funny thing I remember from my younger years -- there is an episode of Saved by the Bell (one of the "beach") episodes where Zack says something to Lisa and they kind-of have a fight. The audience goes, "oooh" but you can clearly hear a guy say, "Busted!" and it's super funny.

You are way too funny. I too, hate the cell phone thing, wrapper thing, and the talking too loud thing.

I also hate it when the person behind me kicks my chair or sets their feet on the back of my chair. I have long hair and when I was younger (yeah, I still have the same 'do) I had some hair that hung off the back of my chair in the movie theater. There was snow on the ground and the guy sitting behind me set his 2 wet and nasty combat boots on my chair/hair. Ugh - lesson learned for me - to keep my hair on my side of the chair!

wow. You TOTALLY missed your calling. There is a job in Hollywood that is just what you do- script supervisor. They keep track of what hand a drink is in, how much drink is in the glass, if the sleeves of the shirt of the arm holding the glass is rolled up and how high...sadly most of this gets tossed out in editing and directors will select a better cut based on something else and then continuity gets shat upon. It drives me nuts too- but mostly because I know it is a sign of laziness in post production.

Also- can not stand talking a theatre. At all. I am a very hostile movie-goer if there are talkers near.

Also can't stand people taking kids to R rated movies or any movie after 8. It's not fair to the kids nor is it fair to the other movie patrons that were looking forward to a night out.

You definitely watch movies differently than I do. But, it does sounds like an interesting and amusing way to watch!

I remember being at the movies a few years ago and I was sitting next to a mother and daughter. The daughter spent the entire movie asking very stupid questions while the mother translated the movie to French for her! Talk about annoying especially since the same movie was playing in French in the next room!

I think cell phones should be banned from the movies. It is very distracting and annoying. Besides, if you are going to text the whole time, why bother going?

I hate a lot of the same things! One you didn't mention...and one that drives me NUTS is when the characters on TV shows or movies are on their computer and the computer clicks, beeps, bloops, etc when they click on stuff. (happens on CSI all the time) I don't know about you, but my computer doesn't beep at me!

It's annoying when people react loudly to the movie. I saw "When in Rome" and the reactions from others were lame. I mean it's a romantic comedy...the ending is the same as every other romantic comedy, so why get all mushy about it...loudly.

Speaking from personal experience, with great empathy, and happy to have you in my club, I suggest a little tweaking of characterizations. Would it be fair to change "tad strange" to "pathologically in the grip of performance anxiety"? No? Ok, let's stick with "tad strange".

If I know the end of a movie, I won't watch it until I've forgotten but I've seen plenty of movies where the beginning, middle, or end were great or disappointing but overall I had a different opinion. I really liked "Space Cowboys" but the very end is just stupid and inconsistent with the rest of the movie.

I like the idea of just experiencing the movie as intended and I hope to be surprised at what happens along the way. However, I say "like the idea" because I hate it so much when I think I've missed something important that I can't resist replaying/pausing until I get it (like whispered dialogue or something flashed on the screen too quickly for me to read). The first time I see a movie, I've got no interest in trying to undermine the illusion--it's intended to be an illusion. After that, I'm totally into noticing the background stuff (which, of course, is often pointed out in DVD commentaries).

Like most people, I hate when there are distractions in a theater. I'm in favor of perpetrators being ejected, like in the old days. Maybe a more modern solution would be to have people issued a theater "behavior" card, electronically updated by robo-ushers, so they could be denied entrance the next time or only allowed to attend "people just as rude as you" showings of various movies.

I was skimming back over some of your posts, and when I came across this one, I couldn't help but shout a great big 'AMEN' sister!

Most people have the worst manners at the movie theater these days.

And the inconsistencies... I watch for them too. In Sense and Sensibility, Eleanor is handed the same cup of tea twice in less than a minute.

And do you remember that John Travolta/Nick Cage movie 'Face/Off'? The one where the cop and the criminal undergo plastic surgery to switch faces... there's this prison break scene where it shows the criminal (with the cop's face) gets out by using the cop's fingerprints... but they never switched prints. That one bugged me for weeks afterward.

About Me

I am a 39 year old woman. I am the mother of two beautiful daughters and a handsome son. I am a career woman. As for my TTC world, it certainly doesn't seem like I am "infertile", but I fought for my pregnancies and my TTC/IF history is on the sidebar.
I have two blogs, which are both listed in my profile. One focuses on my daily life - including IF, TTC, pregnancy, delivery and even some "children mentioned" posts. The second blog is ~soley~ posts directly about being the mother to my three children.

Mar 08 ~ IVF #1, Transfer Cancelled due to lining. Out of 15 eggs, 9 were mature and all 9 fertilized. I have named my 9 embryos "The Mod Squad" and they are in the freezer, waiting for mommy to be ready.

Apr/May 08 ~ FET #1. C20. 4 embryos "The Fab Four" transferred on 5/05. BFP!!! Very Low Beta (15 at 11dp3dt) but the numers continued to double every 48 hours. Told it was "most likely not viable" and later "most likely ectopic" but we beat all the odds.

Jan 09 (38w0d) ~ Karl is born! -- Crazy 3 days in hospital. Manual version to flip baby from breech to head down, Labor, Delivery, Emergency surgery due to cord detaching from placenta, Scary heart issues from losing over 40% of my blood supply, and then a blood transfusion due to the extreme loss of blood. Whew!